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Saying Java sucks or Java is slow is like saying Lord of the Rings is a lousy story because it had lousy bookcover illustration.

From the years of reading Slashdot and more than a decade on the web reading about how people bash Java, it is pretty clear how many people can't tell the difference between a platform and an API. It is worrying how much of these people make up the world's pool of software professionals.

While it is true that Sun dropped the ball on Java marketing and the Swing API, it is also true that Microsoft wielded its evil muscle trying to kill it (how many can claim to have survived such attacks?) in the 90's (anyone remember the 9-year lawsuit that Sun eventually won?) and Java as a platform and ecosystem stalled because of that. As a 20-year software veteran who used to write in C/C++ and assembly, I'm happily making a good living writing real-time graphics apps with Java that runs on Mac, Windows and Linux. Those who bash Java just don't know what they are missing and I'm happy to keep it that way: less competition for me.

Lastly, Adobe Flexbuilder, the IDE that this iReversi game was written in, is based on Eclipse. And Eclipse is written in Java using the SWT API. Eclipse is also one of the world's most complex piece of software that runs on Mac, Windows and Linux. Adobe's marketing should eat its own smelly socks.

Let's not forget that OpenGL is still the choice of many university research projects and in the scientific visualisation markets. These projects tend to have a much longer shelf life than things like games. Also, Google's efforts in adding 3D to the web, WebGL, is an OpenGL binding to javascript.

To those who think everything on the web should be free, I say this to you:
How would you like if I (and millions of other netizens) expect you to do your day job for free because your boss decided to give away your flagship product for free.
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This fundamental lack of appreciation of economics by the general public is one of the reasons why the U.S. is fast losing its competitive edge to the rest of the world. But if you insist, be my guest, because I don't contribute to your economy and really enjoy being the free rider.

FiReaNGeL commends to us a study by Penn State researchers looking at the effect of video game play on creativity. "[Subjects] were asked to play a popular video game, Dance Dance Revolution, at various levels of complexity. The students took a standard creativity test after playing. The researchers also took readings of the players' skin conductance and asked players if they were feeling either positive or negative after the game ... [T]he study appears to indicate that after playing the game, happy or sad people are most creative, while angry or relaxed people are not. The findings suggest that either high or low arousal is key to creativity. In other words, medium amounts of arousal are not conducive to creativity."